Illustrator printing issues

rudy

Posted 02 November 2007 - 07:31 AM

rudy

Ultimate Contributor

Validated Member

758 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Canada

Canada

Hi All -

I've checked the Adobe Forums and the HP Forums and neither has been able to provide me with a suitable solution to this problem. We have an HP 800PS plotter and are running Adobe CS3 on PCs and Adobe CS2 on a Mac. We can't seem to print Illustrator files directly to the plotter from either system. Half of the layers show up, then half of the layers go missing (primarily text layers but not necessarily limited to). Printing from Acrobat doesn't seem to be a problem. Has anyone else encountered this issue?

Erin John LeFevre

Posted 02 November 2007 - 08:36 AM

Erin John LeFevre

Hall of Fame

Associate Admin

1,050 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Louisville, Colorado USA

Interests:Cartography, Music, GIS, Coffee

United States

Rudy,
This is only a quess, but it sounds like your running out of memory at the plotter. Try adjusting the flattening settings under the advanced print menu. We can usually get a good print after a few adjustments, although recently we've had a few situations where we could only get a good print through Acrobat. It could be a CS3 issue. Keep us posted. Once I get to work I can look at our print settings a little more closely and see if I can be a little more specific and useful. This is something we'd like to resolve as well.

rudy

Posted 02 November 2007 - 09:45 AM

rudy

Ultimate Contributor

Validated Member

758 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Canada

Canada

This is only a quess, but it sounds like your running out of memory at the plotter.

I doubt if it is a memory issue. We've successfully printed 30 MB Freehand files from a Mac to this plotter. The sample I send from Illustrator is less than 1 MB in size. We've also printed larger Acrobat files successfully as well.

Rick Dey

Posted 02 November 2007 - 09:50 AM

Rick Dey

Legendary Contributor

Validated Member

302 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Santa Rosa, CA

Interests:Illustrator, MAPublisher, GIS, Street Maps

United States

We have an 800PS that we print to from PowerMacG5s across the network. When printing from AI 10 we occasionally will get individual letters dropping out of words and other strange behavior. The severity can range from a couple words on a map to virtually all the type losing some letters. We seem to have narrowed the problem down to occurring in the afternoon. (I know this is starting to sound real weird!) We finally have found a process that seems to solve the problem, we power cycle the printer. My guess is that if there have been a large number of jobs printed on a given day that there are memory problems, somehow the memory is not clearing out after a job is completed and problems occur later. We've had this printer for 5 years now and it has worked nearly flawless until this problem cropped up in the last year. The machine has been a real workhorse for us.

Additionally when printing from CS2 we are flat out unable to print virtually any job directly from AI. Our workaround has been to place an EPS file in InDesign. It then prints perfectly. Its an exceptionally irritating problem. Fortunately we will be replacing the 800PS with a T1100ps very soon after the start of the next budget year, it was scheduled to go this year but had to be delayed.

Matthew Hampton

Posted 02 November 2007 - 11:36 AM

Matthew Hampton

Hall of Fame

Moderator

1,333 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Portland, Oregon

Interests:Playing in the mountains and rivers.

United States

I used to have problems printing large files from CS, CS2 but since Adobe switched to PDF as a native file type in AI - I have stopped using .ai files and always save my native Illustrator files as editable PDF's.

When I need to print - I just use Acrobat and don't have to place/re-save anything.

I'll bet the problematic 1Mb file has a transparent fill or a raster effect (drop shadow?) and the printer does not have enough memory to RIP the PS3 language.

merft

Posted 02 November 2007 - 05:50 PM

merft

Key Contributor

Validated Member

86 posts

Location:Colorado

United States

Have you tried Advanced=>Print As Image from the Acrobat Print Dialog. This will rasterize everything before Acrobat sends it to the printer. If it prints using this method, you are running into a memory issue with the plotter. -Tom

Posted 02 November 2007 - 09:31 PM

Same plotter and same problems. At times we would get perfect maps and other times many layers missing.

Is there an option that allows you to make a layer in Illustrator non-printable? If the option is availiable in Illustrator that could be your problem.

"There is much beauty that we fail to see through our own eyes teeming with life forms that give us that perception of our reality. Leaves on the trees blowing gently in the wind, or scarily, the waves pounding through high surf, or lightly on a warm summer’s day; that opportunity to sit or swim in the water on a white beach. That comfort to shout, “The universal conscious do you hear me? I am alive, guide me dear logos towards the path of rightnesses.” Earned what has been kept, no longer to be absorbed into a life filled with cold damn winds and that stubborn fog clouding my vision with nothing but darkness."

rudy

Posted 06 November 2007 - 09:05 AM

Same plotter and same problems. At times we would get perfect maps and other times many layers missing.

Is there an option that allows you to make a layer in Illustrator non-printable? If the option is availiable in Illustrator that could be your problem.

I can print the same file to a different print and get perfect results. Not so for the HP 800 PS. I think it's a printer issue. I'll be doing some more testing when time allows and keep you all posted.

We have an Epson 7600 and while we don't have the same issues, we do have perennial problems printing from AI CS3. We pretty much always go through InDesign, in part because the print interface is so much nicer in ID. Note you do not have to export/save as an EPS to place in InDesign; you can also save as an .ai file with the "embedded PDF" option clicked. This keeps the file size smaller...